Ideas in the Wild: How Stephen Kagawa Aims To Offer a Better Approach to Financial Advising
The dynamic between financial advisors and those we advise is broken.
As advisors, we want open and honest relationships with our clients. We also want a sense of purpose in our work that comes from serving, not selling. Yet somehow, serving others turns into pushing products that drive profits. Left unchecked, this tension forces us to become salespeople and destroys the trust we’ve built with our clients.
There must be a way advisors can do good and do well…right?
There is, and in his new book Aloha Financial Advising, Stephen Kagawa shares a better approach to advising. Drawing on personal experience, Stephen shows readers how to shift their focus away from products and services and back to those they serve. I recently caught up with Stephen to learn more about his journey writing the book and the ideas he shares.
What happened that made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment you realized these ideas needed to get out there?
I’ve been encouraged to share my philosophies, consultative and practice management methodologies, as unique ways I call on in my attempt to ground myself and my business. At the risk of oversimplifying, these methods are centered about my core beliefs and it’s my wish to inspire and motivate advisors to center their careers and build their businesses around the core beliefs and values that they choose to live their lives by.
Focusing on delivering to an aspirational vision of hope supported vigilantly by missions of purpose to shape that hope into reality that’s informed by one’s core values — what they truly believe in and what truly reflects from their core — could lead to a new dynamic of success for aspiring advisors. It did for me. This is needed, especially given the fact that less than 14% of those who choose a career in financial advising remain in it after three years. That fails to inspire great people to seek careers in financial planning nor promises lifetime financial guidance from the advisor with whom they initially engaged.
Refocusing and grounding an advisor’s practice on what they believe in and live for is a powerful elixir to help confront and tackle the natural challenges we face on our road toward finding sustained success. At the same time, I really do believe that we need to get in line with our reality. We are relevant because we understand the importance of living life fulfilled and there is a symbiotic relationship when we aim ourselves unselfishly toward helping someone achieve their goals and ultimate happiness, as it results in helping us as advisors find ours. It’s the pursuit of our unique definition of happiness that is of most meaning.
As for the specific moment, after meeting countless advisors who struggle to survive and witnessing so many method salespeople and hearing from their victimized prospects and clients, I believed it important to share a different way that does more for both advisors who embrace it and for those they serve as they do so.
As I ventured around the world, I also realized that the hypocrisies of our industry compound, especially as we live and work from one place to another. Since my beliefs and developed methods are in response to these hypocrisies, I decided to share it in hope of helping those who seek a better way to do better for those they serve and to find greater happiness in doing so.
What’s your favorite specific, actionable idea in the book?
The way that I ask for referrals. While I learned how to effectively convert purchased leads of random people shopping for products I represent, asking for referrals in the manner I recommend in the book completely changed the dynamic of my business.
What’s a story of how you’ve applied that idea in your own life? What has this lesson done for you?
I naturally use it at times when people share their appreciation for what I did for them to me. I ask to be introduced to people of character that I enjoy and admire, people who care about those that depend upon them and do what should to provide the most for them. People of integrity who do what they do exactly the way they say that they’ll do it.
Asking for referrals in this way, immediately empowers and energizes me to effectively transition an already productive budding relationship into an even deeper one with those I request introductions from, blesses me with an even better way to open my initial meeting with a newly introduced prospect that encourages those newly introduced to listen to what I do and how I do it, and positions me well for a successful interview that informs me as to the potential success of this new relationship and of its continuing value to pursue. Embracing this methodology in its totality reduced the expense of both the personal pain of begging for referrals and the financial cost of purchasing cold leads. It also changed for the better the kinds of prospects I meet and, because of it, the people I have the pleasure of meeting and the trajectory of my daily practice.
